


Neither Do I Need a Witness

by eudaimon



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: M/M, Spoilers - Broken Homes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-21
Updated: 2013-11-21
Packaged: 2018-01-02 07:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1053998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of the longest of the long days and nights, Nightingale finds time to reflect and Peter offers some comfort.</p><p>Not all of the boys who've touched him have been rivers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neither Do I Need a Witness

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [Deviantaccumulation](http://deviantaccumulation.tumblr.com/) @ Tumblr. She asked me for Nightingale getting a hug and here's where I ended up.
> 
> Title is from 'Neither Do I Need a Witness' by Joe Pug. This fic contains very slight spoilers for book 4: Broken Homes.

Secured but not yet under siege, the Folly's heartbeat grows sluggish. With Peter dispatched to bed to sleep off all of that voltage, Molly to her to room to do whatever it is that she does there, Nightingale finds time to reflect. In over a hundred years, he has known many homes but he has loved none of them as well as he loves this house. He grew old once under this roof, and then everything came back in a rush - his youth, coming ever closer, which smells, faintly, of forget-me-nots and snow and muddy water.

Peter isn't the only one who flirts with rivers. Flirted. All of that feels a long, long time ago.

In his day, all of the rivers had been the old man's boys, nothing to do with Mama Thames - he'd never met Oxley, not then, but there had been others, all of them ruddy boys, good and strong boys, fair haired, tanned darkly by swimming under the sun. As a young man, Nightingale had confidence which he now recognises as arrogance - he thought that he could change the world - for Queen, for country, for Empire.

Change did come, in the end.  
But it wasn't the world that changed.

Nightingale remembers, dimly, being kissed. It seems a long time ago now. When was the last time? Not long after the way, he thinks. There was a river who came to him in the night - Kennet or Key, he thinks, but it's difficult to recall - slipped into bed with him, but there had been deep snow at Ettersburg, hadn't there? After that, there had been blood and deep snow; after the war, it had taken him a long, long time to remember how to be warm.

Maybe he'd never quite remembered the knack? Chilly. Like his father before him.

Against all sense and logic, the atrium is almost always the warmest room in the Folly. Nightingale sits in one of the chairs, with a coffee at his elbow, a measure of cognac. He rarely drinks but, sometimes, he just needs something to drive off the chill. The loneliness. It's been a long time since he was the one standing on the Thames, engaged in a very particular sort of pissing contest. His youth is distant, now. He's been holding himself in check for so long, but now there's youth in the Folly again, between Peter and Leslie.

Jesus. _Leslie_.  
What can he do, but hope against hope?

The cognac is good - it tastes warm, rich - a reminder of forgotten studies, fires burning warmly in hearths and conversations that he's long since learned by heart.

"I'll give you a penny for them," says a familiar voice. "Wait. Shit. Pyjamas. No pockets."  
"No pennies, then." Nightingale allows himself a little smile.

Peter in his pyjamas is something both ungainly and lovely, his feet bare against the tiles, a tattered sweatshirt pulled on over his t-shirt. The shape of Peter beneath clothes is something He pauses behind Nightingale, who immediately feels a prickling between his shoulderblades - a remnant of Ettersberg, the collective whispering of all of the ghosts who are ever at his back. Gently, without really turning in the chair, he reaches out and wraps his fingers around Peter's wrist, drawing him around to the side of the chair. He can feel the warmth rolling off Peter's skin; it's so difficult not to be greedy about it, not to try and drink it all up. He has this moment, this few seconds, where all he can do is picture pushing his hands up under Peter's clothes, feeling the warmth of him, reading him like a map. He might push him down into one of the armchairs. Soft clothes would shove easily out of the way. He could borrow that warmth, for a few minutes. Like the moon might borrow light from the sun.

Something like that.

Molly glides in through the door and breaks his reverie; his fingers, he realises, are still curled around Peter's wrist. Peter's looking at him, but it doesn't escape Nightingale's notice that he also hasn't tried to pull away.

"We're fine, thank you, Molly," says Nightingale, letting Peter go, waiting for him to take a seat in the nearest available chair, close enough that his knee almost brushes against Nightingale's own. The plaid fabric of his pyjamas looks so worn that it must be impossibly soft. Nightingale finds his fingers almost aching to touch.

It has been the longest of the long days and nights. Somewhere upstairs, there's a nightwitch sleeping or not sleeping. Leslie is both gone and not quite gone. Nightingale finds himself too tired to care about any of it. 

"Can I have a coffee, Molly?" Peter doesn't really look hopeful. "Tea? Hot chocolate?"  
"Bring him something hot, please, Molly," says Nightingale and is gratified to see the slight change in the tilt of of her head before she glides away. So maybe not _everything_ has gotten away from him today.

"You look knackered," says Peter, and his kneecap actually does brush against Nightingale's. With Molly gone, the Folly is silent and it feels like they could be the last people left in the world. It wouldn't be entirely unpleasant if they were. Though, with Peter there, somehow Nightingale doubts that it would be entirely _quiet_.

"I am...particularly tired," he concedes.  
"So what happens next?" Peter leans forward in his chair, catching his weight across his knees. This time, it's the backs of his fingers that brush against Nightingale's knee. He remembers other boys, distant boys, who touched him intentionally. Not all of them had been rivers.  
"I would like to sleep for a while," says Nightingale, and he allows himself another faint smile. "And then...I honestly don't know. The ball is very much not in our court." The idiom feels oddly shaped in his mouth. "So we wait. And we see."

Peter makes a soft, dismissive noise and sways forward, so smoothly, so quickly, that Nightingale almost doesn't see it happen. Peter's hand comes to rest against the back of Nightingale's neck, a gentle, surprising touch. It doesn't take much to relax into it. Just for a beat or two, Nightingale lets himself feel less than he has always been required to be. He lets Peter hold him upright, just for a split second.

Molly doesn't make a sound, doesn't clear her throat or say anybody's name, but he becomes aware of her presence, all the same.

They separate. It isn't easy or smooth. They fumble and there is a very strange, very particular look on Peter's face, which reminds Nightingale that the Folly has a good many bedrooms that nobody ever sleeps in, and that things don't necessarily have to be forever, not if tides rise and fall and summers come and go and, eventually, come around again.

"I'll stay here, I think," he says, fighting to compose himself, with all his ghosts rushing around his ankles like currents in a river. "Keep a watch. We're locked up tight but this does seem to be a day for surprises."

From the way Peter moves, a little stiffly as he stands, it's clear that he understands that, better than most. Nightingale stands - it's only polite - and that's when Peter does it, wraps one arm around his shoulders and pulls him in close. For a moment, Nightingale breathes in the scent of him - the clean, boyishness of him - and he thinks about how much possibility there can be in people, how human beings are a million possible lives contained by skin. Briefly, desperately, he holds onto Peter Grant, and then he lets him go.

"I think I'll take my drink to bed," he says.  
Nightingale nods.

"I'll see you in the morning," he says, his ghosts swirling and eddying around his ankles like currents in a river.

Somehow, amazingly, watching Peter go up the stairs - with the Folly at his back - he manages to stay on his feet.


End file.
